


i love the way you say my name

by overtheanvilwestretch



Series: they say absence makes the heart grow fonder [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Art school Will, College, Fluff and Angst, Ivy league Mike, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, New Relationship, One Shot Collection, Phone Sex, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-02-27 07:06:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13243077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overtheanvilwestretch/pseuds/overtheanvilwestretch
Summary: The follow-up to “promises we make in the dark” wherein: Will and Mike return to their respective schools after a transformative winter break together and must figure out how to navigate their newfound long distance relationship.





	i love the way you say my name

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes for reference, my Byers Brothers headcannon is: After graduating from NYU, Jonathan got offered a job managing an art gallery in Chicago, which was perfect because his little brother would be attending art school in the city in the fall (if I’ve got the timeline correct, that is). They live in a tiny two-bedroom apartment with exposed brick walls, worn wooden floors, and beautiful framed black and white photography prints sharing the wallspace with The Clash vintage tour posters. Will is going to school full time on a pretty generous scholarship and serving at a diner nearby for his portion of the rent. They see basement grunge bands together on the weekends and call their mom (at least!) once a week. Also, Nancy and Jonathan are still together and she just finished up at Northwestern and is headed to med school next fall.
> 
> I think that's all you need to know for now lol

Will flopped down onto the couch and didn’t even bother to remove his coat, which was still dotted with snowflakes. He haphazardly tossed his leather satchel onto the worn, bright orange La-Z-Boy recliner to his left. It landed with a thud, directly onto his brother’s copy of “Welcome to the Monkey House”.

He was exhausted by work and school and, if he was being completely honest, thinking about Mike. _What was he doing right now? Who was he with? Had he thought about Will half as many times as Will had thought about him today?_

“You know what? Sometimes I think I didn’t roughhouse with you enough as a kid. Then maybe you’d have a little more respect for your big bro.” Jonathan smirked, picked up his little brother’s bag and deposited it onto the floor next to him.

Will looked over his shoulder as if realizing for the rest time that he wasn’t alone in the room. Normally, he had the apartment to himself on Friday nights. Jonathan assistant managed the art gallery nearby and had events to coordinate nearly every weekend. And ever since the two had been back in Chicago since the end of the holidays, that meant Will had the apartment to himself to mope in peace. Was it that late already?

He turned his face back towards the ceiling and sighed, “I think my time in the underworld was all the roughhousing any of us could stand, Jonathan.”

His big brother laughed and shut his book before placing it on the coffee table. Well, not so much a coffee table as it was a series of milk crates held together by zip ties, but the principle still stood. Everything in their apartment was either thrifted for cheap, hustled together with meager savings, or gifted to them by their mom and stepdad. It helped that when Hopper and El moved in with the family, he had kept all of the old furniture from the cabin in storage. So when the time came for Jonathan to move to Chicago from New York to start his new job, and for Will to move to start art school, all they needed was a pickup truck and they were almost completely set in their new place together.

“You wanna talk about what’s going on with you or do you want me to let you pout this one out in peace?” Jonathan and Will had always had a strong relationship, even given their age gap. It seemed that despite the distance when Jonathan left for school a few years ago, the two had brotherhood based first in friendship.

Will wanted to tell his brother what was going on, he really did, but he had made Mike promise that they would keep this whole thing just between the two of them for a while. Mike didn’t quite understand it at first. He thought that Will was getting cold feet about everything that had happened between them, but he agreed anyway. He would never push his best friend to do anything he didn’t feel comfortable with. And he wasn’t going to start now just because they were… _boyfriends?_

Neither of them knew quite what to call their newfound relationship, even after they’d spent most of winter break tangled up in each other’s arms (and legs and... other body parts).

Will just wasn’t ready to shatter the perfect bubble that they’d been able to construct. And he knew that the more people that knew about them, the harder it would be to keep things as pure and simple as they had been on those nights in Mike’s basement, pretending for his parents’ sake that they were just having sleepovers like the old days. Or when they were back in Will’s almost too small bed, whispering to one another and trying their damndest not to make noise as they mapped their way across each other’s bodies in the darkness.

Will missed him terribly. There was a different type of emptiness now, something he couldn’t have imagined before. He was happy that the two of them had managed to get to where they were now, but that also meant he felt their separation more acutely. There seemed to be no happy medium.

“I want to talk about it. I just don’t know that I’m ready to yet.” He looked back at his brother, who met his exhausted expression with one of compassion. The same look he’d given him all those years ago when he’d sit on the edge of his bed and give the best version of a pep talk he could manage. “I will be soon, though.”

Jonathan simply nodded, ruffled his little brother’s hair and stood up for a stretch.

“Well,” he yawned, extending his arms above his head, “if it makes you feel any better, Mike called for you earlier.”

Will snapped up and turned to his brother quickly, “What? Why? Did he leave a message? Did you talk to him? What did he sound like? Was he-”

“Whoa whoa whoa, take it easy,” Jonathan smiled and shrugged on the black denim jacket that had been hanging on the back of the chair, “He didn’t sound like anything was wrong. He just asked me to tell you to call him back when you got home.”

Will could feel his heart rate settling considerably after that. He and Mike had agreed not to suddenly change their once a week calling scheduling just because they were involved now. Will knew it had the potential to take both of them out of focus, distract them from their work and their studies. And perhaps more importantly, he also knew how quickly he could become consumed with Mike Wheeler, how fast he could become completely absorbed in their new relationship.

He still wasn’t sure if things could stay this good forever. And if they didn’t, he wanted to at least be able to say that he’d tried to guard his heart.

“I’m headed out for the night, okay? Nancy just got her MCAT scores back and they’re fantastic, of course, so I’m taking her out to celebrate. The place is all yours!” He didn’t have to say what he was implying with that statement and the one before it. Will was free to be as mushy and sappy as he wanted to be on the phone tonight in complete privacy. He may not have told his brother what was going on between him and his best friend, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t put the pieces together for himself. Will couldn’t help but be a little grateful for his intuition.

Jonathan was barely out the door before Will rushed across the room to grab the landline from where it sat perched on the boys’ old boombox. He grabbed the cushion from the chair, sat on it cross legged on the floor, dialed the number he knew by heart and held his breath as he waited. He didn’t know what he was suddenly so anxious about. He and Mike had spoken to each other on the phone twice and sent each other at least three letters a piece since being back in their respective cities. But he’d never spoken to him without Jonathan being in the apartment or without Mike’s roommate being in his room, so they’d been keeping things the way they’d always kept them. Strictly platonic.

Will couldn’t tell Mike even half of the things he’d been thinking since they’d parted ways in Hawkins.

“Will?”

Mike picked up on the second ring, slightly breathless.

“Mike,” Will smiled on his end of the phone, instantly relieved to hear the sound of his voice, “Why do you sound like that?”

There was a little rustling on the other end of the line, “I uh, just got out of the shower and heard the phone ringing. I sort of ran back to the room from the bathroom.”

Mike laughed nervously and Will could tell he was probably doing that thing where he scratched the back of his neck and blushed before looking away. He did it whenever he was feeling particularly bashful.

“So you mean to tell me you’re still wrapped in your towel?”

“Yup. And I probably still have soap behind my ears too.”

Will smiled at how familiar it all felt, being back on the phone with his best friend. But at the thought of Mike in nothing but his bath towel, his stomach did a little flip that indicated something other than just pure friendship.

“If I were there you’d probably be in less than just a towel by now.”

Will was feeling a little daring, and spoke before he even had time to catch himself.

Mike breathed heavily on the other end and Will could feel the energy of the conversation shift from playful to something more heady almost immediately. As much as he wanted to catch up with Mike, to tell him all about his day and the new piece he was working on for his studio art class, something told him that wasn’t why his boyfriend had called him before their designated date and time.

“Will, I wish you were here so bad. I’ve been thinking about you all day. I just,” he stopped for a moment before continuing, “needed to hear your voice saying my name.”

Mike would never admit that at heart he was a hopeless romantic, despite the fact that his actions consistently reinforced that very fact. Today was one of the days where he couldn’t even pretend like he didn’t want to catch the first flight to O’Hare, just at the sound of his boyfriend’s voice.

“Michael,” Will sighed more than said.

He held the phone against his ear like he could somehow hold Mike himself closer. He could feel that prickling sensation at his eyelids, the one that alerted him to incoming tears. Knowing Mike had been thinking about him, in just the same way that he’d been doing all day made him want to cry. He suddenly understood why people at the diner opened up to him so willingly about their love lives when he poured their coffee or asked them whether they wanted their eggs scrambled or sunny side up. Love wasn’t meant to be contained or kept to yourself. And if it was meant to be that way, then it was really fucking difficult.

“Do you feel it?”

Will didn’t have to ask what. He already knew. He could feel everything, everywhere, all of the time. There was a new awareness to his body that he hadn’t had before. Even his heart felt different in his chest, like it was fit to burst forth.

“Yes, I feel it,” he shut his eyes in an attempt to compose himself. “I wish we were together too. I wish you were here, under my comforter, holding me as we watched the snow fall outside of my bedroom window.”

Mike didn’t miss a beat before continuing, “And we’d have that vinyl playing, The Smiths one Hopper bought you for your birthday a few years ago.”

“And you’d do that thing you do where you try to sing like Morrissey but mostly just sound like you have a cold.” Will laughed a watery little laugh and Mike did too, though he tried to sound insulted.

“Hey! I do a great Morrissey, thank you very much.”

The living room was almost completely dark now, except for the light from the street lamp shining through their second floor window. Will wished it were completely pitch black though. He thought it might make it easier for him to lose himself in the fantasy of the two of them together, listening to _Hatful of Hollow_ , and consumed by the warmth of each other despite the temperature outside.

“You do the best Morrissey you can do,” he conceded, “And besides, I’d just smile along, my head on your chest, tracing patterns onto your shirt, right above your heart.”

Mike rarely got the room to himself, given that his roommate, Lawrence (or Larry, as he preferred to be called) was a bit of a homebody with a love of naps and near obsessive habit of calling his hometown girlfriend on the landline. It frustrated him to no end, not having any privacy. Especially now that he had things he wanted to say to Will that required him to be without an audience. It only added insult to injury that the guy was from Boston, which was barely an hour bus ride away from Providence, so there was no need for the (wannabe) long distance fanfare.

It had been one of the first things that he told Mike, actually, after his name.

“My girl, Lottie, was supposed to come here this fall but got stuck back home with her parents,” Mike could barely decipher what he was saying through his thick Boston accent. He wondered briefly if his voice might be dripping with a similar midwestern drawl, one he couldn’t hear because he’d become so accustomed to it. Larry unpacked some clothes from his suitcase and carelessly tossed them in one of their dresser drawers. “She’s wicked smart. You got a lady back in Iowa?”

He didn’t bother correcting him. Anything besides California but west of Pennsylvania seemed to be the same state to most of the folks out here, he’d realized.

“Um no,” he responded quickly, his thoughts immediately going to the one person he had left back in the midwest that he already missed terribly, “no lady to speak of.”

Larry had patted him on the back enthusiastically and told him that they would have to go out together. He wasn’t interested in picking up any girls, he said, because he had every intention of making an honest woman out of Lottie. But he would be more than happy to play wingman whenever Mike needed him to. That night they attended their first college party and Mike downed so many jello shots he could barely walk back to the dorm when it was all over. But before that, he had been just drunk enough to think that responding to a very eager Holly Baxter’s advances by hooking up in a coat closet might be a good idea.

When he finally got back to his room, he threw up for half of the night. And the next day he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the sickness caused by the anxiety of kissing someone that felt so very, very wrong ended and the alcohol poisoning began. Not that he could blame Larry for either of those things, but needless to say, the two hadn’t been to a party together since.

Later though, when they caught up, that hadn’t been the story he told Will about that night. And at the time he couldn’t tell whether that had been more for his own benefit or for his best friend’s.

“Are you-” Mike started and swallowed quickly, “Are you alone?”

He had to ask, even though he could assume the answer. He knew how important it was to Will to keep what they had going private for the time being. But he also knew how much he’d missed being intimate with him since he’d returned to campus, and didn’t think he could wait until Sunday to talk about it. It was simple: Mike wanted to have phone sex with his boyfriend. That was that. And when Larry announced that he was headed home for the weekend, Mike thought there would be no better time than the present to make it happen.

“Yes,” Will responded with a barely audible whisper. He could already feel himself growing hard.

Mike had never done this before, he’d never had a reason to. Something about the newness of it, the excitement of sharing another first with his boyfriend, made him feel a little drunk on impulsivity. Only this time, he knew exactly what he’d feel in the morning when he woke up.

“Are you touching yourself?” Mike’s own towel had already fallen away as he sat on the edge of his bed. He stroked himself lightly, but could already sense that this might not last very long.

“Yes,” Will wrapped his hand around his hardness and imagined that it was Mike’s instead of his own. He imagined the hand a little more calloused, the fingers slightly longer, pumping him to full size.

“We’re still in your bed, the record still playing, but now your leg is around my waist. You’re moving against me and breathing into my neck, right against that spot above the birthmark on my collarbone.”

“And I roll us over so that I’m on top of you, straddling you. I can feel how hard you are through your jeans. You feel so good, so turned on for me, but I need more."

Mike moaned lightly into the phone, “What did you do next?”

“I’m grinding down on you so hard and fast now that your fingers grip my waist to slow me down. You don’t want to finish too early. Your nails graze my skin just enough that I know I’ll be able to see faint scratch marks there in the morning.”

“Not enough to hurt you though, right?”

Will got that feeling again, the one where it seemed like his heart might be too big for his body. Even now, in a moment like this, Mike was worried about his well-being. It was almost enough to make Will finish right then and there.

“No, of course not,” Will answered, “I like it when you hold on to me tight, like you don’t ever wanna let go. I like looking at my body and remembering all the ways you made me feel you.”

  
“Oh God,” Mike had to think about something else for a second. If he considered too deeply what Will’d just said, he knew this would be over. “You feel so right on top of me. So perfect. Like you belong there.”

“Because I do. I do belong there. We were made for this, for each other.”

From there it was all imagination, but they’d both done enough dreaming about it in their spare time to know what happened next. During the holiday break, they’d done a whole lot of fooling around, but had decided to stop just shy of penetration every time. Neither of them wanted to rush into things, and wanted to make sure they were solid in their relationship before going to that level. But that didn’t mean they hadn’t been thinking about it.

Will didn’t care to admit just how long he’d been thinking about it, in fact.

Mike described their next moves swiftly, in clarifying detail. They shed their clothes fast, tossing them aside. Will reclaims his position on top on him, and they kiss deeply as Will uses his fingers to prepare himself to slowly ease himself down onto Mike’s erection.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, moving over me, biting your lip as you try to keep from coming.” He didn’t know where the words were coming from. Mike had never thought of himself as someone who got off on dirty talk before, but then again, everything with Will was newfound territory for him. He felt safe enough to try all kinds of things he’d never tried before in this partnership.

“I’m not gonna be able to-”

“It’s happening right n-”

They finished within moments of one another, both exhausted in the best way possible. They both breathed heavily into the phone. After he’d finally gotten his bearings and used his discarded towel to clean himself up again, Mike began to expect some of the awkwardness from the first time they’d been together to creep back in. The thought of that dreaded silence from their first encounter scared him so much he thought about just saying a quick goodnight and hanging up before Will could respond.

“That was fun," it almost sounded like Will was smiling as he continued, “I say we kick Jonathan and Larry’s asses to the curb every weekend.”

Mike laughed, half in relief and entirely in agreement, “Sounds like a deal. But I think I might have a slightly better plan.”

“Well please feel free to enlighten me, my honorable paladin. What could be better than what we just did?”

“What are you doing for Valentine’s Day weekend?” He asked, feeling nervous for some reason about what the answer might be.

Will’s smile spread wider than he thought possible, as he considered the possibilities of what lie ahead.

“That depends. My boyfriend lives 1000 miles away, so our date options are pretty limited.”

Mike was already doing the math to figure out how many shifts he would have to pick up at the library to pay for his flight, but he knew that no number of hours reshelving books in the stacks would dissuade him. His mind was made up. Even if he couldn’t do much else in the meantime, he knew one thing: There was no way he was going to spend Valentine’s Day without his boyfriend.

"Will Byers, would you like to go to dinner with me?" He asked, just a little shyly. 

And Mike swore the sound of the resounding _yes_ that followed might have been one of the best sounds he'd ever heard.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Just when I thought I had gotten these two and their romance out of my system, I got this idea for another one-shot. Find me on Tumblr at usingallyourlighters.tumblr.com to talk all things byeler (or to send me some prompts, since it doesn't look like I can give these two up lol).


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